CISTI 2011 | 338 A General Interoperability Architecture for e-Government based on Agents and Web Services Fábio Marques 1,4 , Gonçalo Paiva Dias 1,3 , André Zúquete 2,4 ESTGA 1 , DETI 2 , GOVCOPP 3 , IEETA 4 University of Aveiro Aveiro, Portugal fabio@ua.pt , gpd@ua.pt , andre.zuquete@ua.pt Abstract—As Information and Communication Technologies are constantly evolving, governments should embrace this evolution to provide more efficient and effective around-the-clock services. The need to deliver services that gather information from several Public Administration branches turns interoperability architectures an essential tool for e-government. However, this service provisioning is complex and brings a set of new concerns that are nonexistent in the traditional way of delivering public services, mainly security related. Security is one of the key points for determining the success or failure of an e-government application. In this paper we present a generic interoperability architecture for e-government based on Software Agents and Web Services where the main objective is to provide a secure way for delivering integrated services from the client’s (citizens, businesses or Public Administration) perspective. Interoperability; e-Government; Web Services; Software agents; Security; Trust; interoperability I. INTRODUCTION “The use of Information and Communication Technologies on government activities” is the definition of e-government given by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)[1]. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support the delivery of services within the Public Administration has a number of advantages, amongst them: the improvement of the quality of service delivery; the reduction of exploitation costs; and the increase of productivity. The clients (citizens, businesses, government branches, etc.) of the Public Administration also benefit. The trade between the endless waiting in line for being attended and the availability of services through a wide range of channels 24 hours a day 7 days a week brings closer the government and its clients. Nowadays, Public Administration clients are demanding a new set of life event services[2] that may require communication between several public administration branches. Why should clients request a service only with the intention to get the certificates that allows them to request a second service? Because data is already in the possession of the Public Administration, it should be automatically made available to the office that needs it: this is an interoperability problem. The need for more complex services and the need to deliver services (simple or complex) in a more effective and efficient way led governments and institutions to encourage research and development, through funding, towards presenting solutions for the interoperability problem. This problem has no easy solution: legal, social and technical aspects must be taken into consideration. Interoperability architectures are complex by nature. The systems that communicate through the architecture are usually heterogeneous: they have different purposes, different data models, and their policies diverge. There are several architecture frameworks, to name a few: Dias and Rafael (D&R) [3], Access-eGov [4] and Secure Electronic Contracts (SeCO) Container [5]. The approaches to the interoperability problem diverge, as well as their solutions. From our point of view, the ideal approach to the problem is to have an application or a set of applications in the architecture that make decisions related to the workflow of a process based on a set of criteria. We define software agent as an application that has autonomy, is reactive and proactive and is able to communicate with other software agents. This definition is based on one given by Michael Luck et al.[6]. With this definition and bearing in mind that the Public Administration is made of a set of heterogeneous entities with heterogeneous systems, that, in many situations, overlap service delivery, we argue that the natural choice for an interoperability architecture for e-government is an agent-based architecture. Security is one of the most important aspects of e- government systems. It is often referred as a critical aspect to determine the success or failure of e-government initiatives[3]. Many of the security issues found in digital world have no match in face-to-face delivery of Public Administration services. Security issues like trust, authentication and access control must be dealt very carefully. Security assurance in interoperability architectures is complex due to the heterogeneity and different data models, security requirements and profiles of the systems that must interoperate. Adding to this, the complexity of the interoperability architectures and related security issues increases by the fact that they should not be limited to services provided directly by the government, they could be used by private entities to deliver their own services.